Primer (2004) - Watch 1, impressions and questions

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD

This is a great movie that you don’t want spoiled. Watch it yourself and you
will have a GREAT experience trying to figure everything out. (Not that I am
there yet, but I have a feeling it will be great!)

Of course, I didn’t understand everything. I sort-of have a sketch of what
really happened, but I am not sure on the details, and the last 15 minutes of
the movie totally went over my head. For this watch, I am just going to list the
things that I could make out. This definitely simplifies the plot, but the
specifics are still hard to get.

First of all, the characters.

This is Abe:

And Aaron:

Abe’s girlfriend is Rachel Granger, and her dad Thomas Granger is “their last,
best hope of funding”.

Aaron’s wife is Kara. They have a daughter Lauren.

Philip and Robert are two people who appear in the first scene, and once
after. They don’t really matter (as for this viewing), so they can be safely
ignored. It’s only Abe and Aaron who matter.

They don’t like / hate Robert Platt. This is something related to the funding,
it got pulled or something. The hate is important because Aaron, who is
generally defending him, later proposes an idea where he can punch Platt
once, but then stop himself from doing it. Thus, having experienced the
punch but not having to live in a world where there would be consequences.
More on this later.

Chronologically, there’s some science-y stuff and they build something. It’s
not really clear what they are building. The mass of objects they keep
inside decreases after some time. At a first run, the machine just sort of
runs smoothly for a bit but when they run it again for the box, the machine
vibrates a lot and then just stops.

Soon after the first run, Abe is asleep at his place, at 7 pm. Whether it’s
already started, I can not tell. There are two people on his couch, Brad and
the “Man on the Couch”. This again stumps me.

Anyway, Aaron shows Abe a mechanism with which he has a stable method to
reduce the mass of something by 10%. Still quiet unclear about what’s really
going on. They also notice that unplugging the batteries keeps the machine
going for a few minutes before it shuts down. They call this “blocking
gravity” inside the box.

Now, about 20 minutes into the film, is where the looping begins. We aren’t
really sure who it is, but an Abe walks out into the terrace of an office
building. The camera fades into the shot of Abe walking towards an Aaron.
So, the walking Abe might not be the same as the terrace Abe, and actually,
I think they aren’t the same. It is worth noting here (and I just realised
this) that the first time this happened, Aaron was NOT able to reach Abe the
whole day on his work or cell because Abe is already doing this every day!
He’s already called in sick, and has left his cell phone making him
unreachable, and maintaining the perfect symmetry each day. This happens
somewhere around noon because after this, Abe takes Aaron to the protein
thing, shows him all of that, then they go to the lab where they do the
watch thing, and finally, when they have eaten, it’s 315 and Abe is walking
into the storage shed to lie there for the next six hours to come out as a
new Abe.

From the end of the movie, it’s clear that the Aaron sitting on the bench with
the headphones, is listening to the conversation that’s about to happen.
There had to have been a time when it happened for the first time, or the
second. As the narrator says at around 64 minutes, the second time Aaron
came back, “It wasn’t so easy. He didn’t expect me to put up a fight. But I
realised he simply wanted it more. He had already performed the tasks I had
intended to, of recording the conversations of the day, as I had intended
to.” So, the second time Aaron came back was when he met the narrator,
fought with him and took the narrator. Who is the narrator? (That’s a
question I have been unable to answer, still)

The night of Robert’s birthday party is the same day as the time when Abe
tells Aaron for the first time what the machine really does, the same day
that they put the watch into the machine for the first time and figure out
what it really does. The same day with the protein build-up sequence. Rachel
goes to the birthday because Abe asks her to, and Rachel’s ex-boyfriend shows
up with one of Aaron’s friends. The ex-boyfriend brings a shotgun out and
Aaron rushes him, eventually saving everyone. They call him “the hero” for
doing this. Abe reprimands him at having done this without thinking about
Kara and Lauren. The first time that this happens in the movie, Aaron
doesn’t have headphones plugged in, which leads me to believe that this
reprimand from Abe is the first time that Aaron even does this, and Abe is
NOT at the party this first time because he doesn’t know about it and has to
hear about it from Robert. He decides to go to the party after he knows
what’s going to happen there, Abe definitely does NOT go to the party the
first time.

This particular event becomes an obsession with Aaron and Aaron seems to
keep repeating this sequence, again and again until he is satisfied with how
events turn out. As the narrator says, this might have taken 3 or 4 times or
even more. No one can say. This sequence, and the constant changing of
what’s happening seems to be what makes the two of them come undone from the
routine they had going which made a lot of money but didn’t have any
recognition from anyone.

The first time the protein buildup scene comes up, Aaron is wearing the
headphones, which means it’s not the first time he’s going through it. He’s
actually already gone through it once and is simply following the script to
keep everything the same.

The scene in the movie where the put the watch in and notice the 1300 thing,
doesn’t have Aaron with the headphones which perhaps means that that is the
first time that that happened. Note that by this time, the human sized box
already exists and is in the storage shed. Abe has already built it. Aaron
still is only understanding the box, whereas Abe has gone ahead, built the
box, gone back in time, and is NOW explaining the box to Aaron. (while
Aaron’s equivalent Abe in this world is actually seen by Aaron walking into
the storage shed at the time they walk in through the binoculars)

So, clearly Abe has been doing this more times than Aaron has. Abe also
figures out that he can make money by simply figuring out which stock grew
the most in the last 6 hours, then go back, get out of the box and buy that
stock. Essentially, starting 830 am, Abe and Aaron spend 6 hours in the
hotel, 6 hours in the machine and were able to go back in time, to
eventually get out of the box at 850 am.

This is a small drawing I made of how the double really comes to be:
(wherever there are two lines overlapping, the doubles co-exist)

That’s about all I have time for now. There are still several things that are
unexplained:

Thomas Granger: What’s he doing? Why’s he following them? How did he travel
back 2 or 3 days? Why would they even let him know about the machine or let
him use it?

Fail-safe: Who built this machine? Why did he build it?

The killing in the failsafe machine’s room, Abe kills someone. Is it Abe
killing himself or Abe killing Aaron? I am leaning towards the former.

What is the exact sequence of the way stuff goes down? (This is the
question that will finally hold the answer!)